Most redoubted and beloved prince! if as well it had pleased you at your going to Delphos, as now, to have used my humble service, both I should in better season, and to better purpose have spoken; and you (if my speech had prevailed) should have been at this time, as no way more in danger, so much more in quietness? I would then have said that wisdom and virtue be the only destinies appointed to man to follow; whence we ought to seek all our knowledge, since they be such guides as cannot fail; which, besides their inward comfort, do lead so direct a way of proceeding, as either prosperity must ensue; or, if the wickedness of the world should oppress it, it can never be said that evil happeneth to him who falls accompanied with virtue: I would then have said the heavenly powers ought to be reverenced and searched into, and their mercies rather by prayers to be fought than their hidden counsels by curiosity. These kinds of sooth-sayings (since they have left us in ourselves sufficient guides) be nothing but fancy, wherein there must either be vanity, or infallibleness, and so either not to be respected, or not to be prevented. But since it is weakness too much to remember what should have been done, and that your commandment stretched to know what is to be done, I do (most dear Lord!) with humble boldness say that the manner of your determination doth in no sort better please me than the cause of your going. These thirty years you have so governed this region, that neither your subjects have wanted justice in you, nor you obedience in them; and your neighbours have found you so hurtlessly strong, that they thought it {17} better to rest in your friendship, than to make new trial of your enmity. If this then have proceeded out of the good constitution of your state, and out of a wise providence generally to prevent all those things which might encumber your happiness, why should you now seek new courses, since your own example comforts you to continue, and that it is to me most certain (though it please you not to tell me the very words of the oracle) that yet no destiny nor influence whatsoever can bring man’s wit to a higher point than wisdom and goodness: why should you deprive yourself of government for fear of losing your government, like one that should kill himself for fear of death? Nay, rather, if this oracle be to be accounted of, arm up your courage the more against it: for who will stick to him that abandons himself: let your subjects have you in their eyes, let them see the benefits of your justice daily more and more, and so much they needs rather like of present sureties than uncertain changes. Lastly, whether your time call you to live or die, do both like a prince. Now for your second resolution, which is to suffer no worthy prince to be a suitor to either of your daughters, but while you live to keep them both unmarried, and, as it were, to kill the joy of posterity, which in